7 Tips for Successful Email Marketing

Step #1

Put your “subscribe to” in a prominent place on your blog and make the process simple. Don’t ask for too much information. First name and email address is plenty. There’s plenty of other ways to get to know your subscribers once they’re on your email list. The important thing is to get them to sign up.

Step #2

Stay out of the spam folder! Couple things here: make sure you are instructing your subscribers to add you to their contacts so they will receive the emails they signed up for. The other thing, equally important, is to make it easy for them to unsubscribe from your list. If they decide they no longer want to receive emails from you, and it’s too complicated to unsubscribe, they will just throw you in their spam folder (out of sight, out of mind!). Anytime your emails end up in anyone’s spam folder, this can hurt you overall.

Step #3

Give your subscribers a warm welcome! Send your subscribers a welcome message and ideally include some perk for subscribing with you. For example, my subscribers get a pdf, Tools and Tips for Building Your Blog Success.

Step #4

As you are doing with your blog, make your emails scannable. Your subscribers are only going to spend about 30 – 60 seconds on your email. And, even then, that’s only if at a glance, they see something worth spending time on. Use subheadings that will catch the eye’s attention. Keep your paragraphs small. Use bullets and other eye catching features. This will give your email the best chance at actually being read.

Step #5

Include social share buttons. This gives your readers the opportunity to continue the conversation with their peers and friends, getting your information to an even wider audience. Make this easy for your subscriber to do by including social share buttons in your emails.

Step #6

Write like you talk. This is a relationship with your subscriber. Write your email as if you were talking to a friend. According to a study done by the small business CRM product listing site Software Advice, 65% of customers preferred a casual tone of voice. Another benefit to this, the more personable and conversational you are, the more likely your content is to get shared with others, thus continuing the conversation and building a larger audience.

Step #7

Use the features built in to your email list provider. Most email list providers offer analysis features that show things like your click-through rates. Use this information to adjust and tailor future emails for better results. I have found Aweber to be the most reputable and reliable provider and have been using them now since 2009.

That’s it in a nutshell. Follow these 7 steps and see the effect they have on your email list subscribers.

Do you have other tips or tricks that work for you? I’d love to hear about them! Share them in the comments below.